Brushes

Round brushes are the best shape for beginning the art of brush drawing. A size 6 or 8 will do. Check out these favorites of ours!

Synthetic Squirrel Round
(Master’s Touch- Hobby Lobby)

Fiber Blend Round
(Silver Black Velvet)

Travel Round
(Escoda natural hair travel brush with lid)

Paper

Practice in brushwork uses a lot of paper. These papers are selected for cost efficiency, not necessarily for how the paper reacts with a wet medium. Loose paper, sketchbook options, and cold-press are listed below.

18 x 24 Newsprint:
(for brush stroke practice only)

9 x 12 Mixed Media:
(loose paper with a wee bit of sizing)

9 x 12 Sketchbook:
(mixed media for if you prefer bound spiral bound pages for practice)

9 x 12 cold-press watercolor paper:
(Takes on the most amount of water, give you nice washes and perfect for anything Fésole related).

Paint

Choose the best tube paint for what your budget can allow and don’t be tied down to these specific brands. Eventually, you will learn what you prefer over time, but these are good starting points.

When starting out, use what you already own. If you want to buy a pre-made palette, buy something affordable for you that has at least a yellow, magenta & phthalo (cyan). Most pre-made palettes will have at least 2 reds, 2 blues, and two yellows. And a bunch of other things. See below these brand suggestions for extra help.

Daniel Smith Watercolor Essentials

Magenta, Cyan

Plastic travel palette (optional)

7-Well Porcelain Watercolor Palette (Optional)

READ BELOW FOR CLARIFICATION:

The Daniel Smith essentials pack is a fantastic split primary, which is 6 tube paints. They are great colors! You may want a purer magenta (quinacridone pink) & a cyan (phthalo blue green shade) to get closer to perfect primaries instead of the rose & other phthalo listed in the DS essentials. Colors are such a personal preference, so start with the essentials and go from there. The magenta & cyan listed underneath the Daniel Smith are my preferences to two from the Essentials selection.

Choose your preferred type of palette. Travel kind if you’re nature journaling out or in, porcelain if you’re strictly practicing inside.

Ceramic plate purchased at the thrift store is what I use for inside classes, personally! Or any plastic container that I can mix on.